Hark! A Vagrant is an online comic (now archived) about odd and unknown elements of history. I love the illustrations and the subject matter, and I feel like I stumbled over this site years ago but forgot about it at some point. (via)
What has been done to this Porsche would make most of the purists shit themselves in horror, but I find it absolutely beautiful: a ragged out ’74 Targa with 31″ mudders, on its third engine. Bravo, sir, Bravo. (I love how the ducktail is still present, bent upward like a giant middle finger).
One thing that didn’t make it on the 2018 To-Do list was the creation and installation of a longer retaining rod to secure the new spare tire. Stock 1976 Scout wheels were 10.5″ wide and thus the rod mounted to the rear bed wall is a certain length. I’m now dealing with tires that are 12.5″ wide, and the rod is definitely 2″ too short. I bought a 12″ threaded rod and a 3/8″ coupling nut a while back, thinking I’d extend the length of the existing rod and cut off what I didn’t need, but after a test fitting I found that the coupling nut would most likely be right where I needed the wingnut to be, and if my license plate bolts are any indicator, the coupling nut would rattle itself loose after 100 miles. Then I thought I’d make my own rod, by heating the threaded rod and bending it in my vise. I used a propane pipe torch ad within about 10 minutes had the main bend complete but found the shorter bend a little harder to accomplish.
I tried mounting it tonight. Turns out it’s still about 2″ too short, which is a bummer. I’m going to order a 18″ threaded rod tomorrow and see if I can make that work.
Meanwhile, Brian noticed a Scout for sale online and sent the link to Bennett and I. In the huge cache of pictures linked to the ad I noticed how the seller is mounting his spare, and slapped my forehead. Why not get a flat piece of steel, cut it down, and use it for a mounting plate? Looks like I have a trip to the steelyard to make this weekend.
I’ve also set the wheels in motion for a Maryland IH meetup sometime in November with the usual crew of guys, plus a bunch of new faces we’ve met over the last couple of years. As of right now there’s no set destination and no firm date, but I put together a simple online poll and hopefully we’ll get our act together in a week or so.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
My brewing neighbor texted me from the homebrew store over the weekend. I had him pick up a kit for me and goaded him into setting a date, Tuesday after work, to finally get together and brew. As soon as I made it home I had the Scout packed with my gear and began setting up under the pavilion in his backyard at 7:30; by 10 I was pouring wort into my carboy and cleaning equipment. This batch is a Session IPA, which I’ve done before and enjoyed very much. I was hoping for a saison or maybe a bock for my second keg, but they didn’t have much selection in the premade kit inventory.
Meanwhile, over the weekend I racked the grapefruit IPA into a new carboy and dry-hopped it according to the recipe. I’m going to go a little easier on the grapefruit this time, as it was a tad strong the first time around, but otherwise the recipe is the same.
It will be a shock to have not one, but two beers on tap after a drought of over a year.
The week after I replaced the hood on the CR-V, it decided to show its appreciation by stranding Jen in Baltimore City, on the way to pick up a friend for dinner. She said the clutch locked up, and she was unable to shift into or out of 2nd gear. She was able to pilot it safely to a side street and call me; I arranged for a tow truck through USAA and they picked it up a little over an hour later. Our mechanic can’t seem to find the problem but did find that the gear oil was very low. There’s no noise coming from the box and two short trips I’ve taken since then have been painless; this could mean nothing or it could mean the clutch is about to shit itself. Only time will tell, I guess. The mechanic hinted that it would be wiser to buy a new car instead of fixing this one, but we have a large amount of loyalty for this car and I’d much rather keep it on the road than absorb a new car payment.
I’ve had a Flickr Pro account since 2005, when I decided I’d use it for my image hosting CDN. It’s been very useful over the years, even as it’s been bought and sold, and as they’ve added useful features and then taken them away. I’ve found, however, that I’m not using it all that much anymore. The last photos I uploaded there were from the camping trip in June, and everything after that I’ve uploaded directly into WordPress. I’d guess there are a couple thousand photos I’ve linked to over the course of 4,672 posts, and for now that’s fine. I am thinking about the future, however, and at some point I’m going to have to go through each post and update the photo with a local version (as well as fix a bunch where the links have broken). Not today, though.
My IPA stopped fermenting on Thursday evening, so I have to rack it into a secondary fermenter as well as dry hop it. My neighbor picked up another kit for me yesterday and hopefully we will be brewing this evening, but he hasn’t nailed down a time yet. It feels good to have a batch in the works, and it would be even better to have two in the kegerator by Thanksgiving. It also got me thinking about some of the gear I’d like to update next year–a better burner, a slightly bigger kettle with a temperature gauge, and maybe some upgrades to the kegerator itself. But for now, what I’ve got is working well and I’m just happy to be brewing again.
Meanwhile, the crops in the greenhouse are winding down. There are still many black and red cherry tomatoes on the vines, and there’s a second wave of Indian Stripe and Paul Robesons growing slowly, but the whiteflies have really damaged the plants. There aren’t a lot of green leaves left on anything so I don’t know if any of the remaining fruit will ripen at this point late in the season. I’m going to replace the back wall in an effort to keep the heat inside and start winterizing things.
The Weasley twins were returning from their Quidditch match. We saw Fred and Molly as well.
Finn chased the Golden Snitch.
This is her scary face. I think it works.
Walking back over the bridge, we got to see the sun set over the river. Not a bad day at all.
One of my favorite podcasts, Crimetown, is back for season 2, featuring the city of Detroit. It’s already got me hooked. Season 1 was about Provincetown, RI and it was a riveting listen.
Somebody stuffed a note under my wiper blade at soccer practice last week that said “I like your truck. Would you be interested in selling?”
Nope.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Jen’s birthday was back in August, and I completely dropped the ball on her. I didn’t have anything planned, and at that point I was still on a limited diet so she didn’t see the point in going out for dinner anywhere. I should have come up with a Plan C but completely failed her, and I’ve felt terrible about it ever since. I decided I’d try to make it up to her in some small way by arranging a spa day someplace fancy, and enlisted Karean to help me with a recommendation. We agreed on About Faces in Annapolis, and I arranged for a four-hour treatment with lunch for the two of them. In the meantime Finn had a double-header soccer day, because they missed a whole weekend on account of the rain.
I packed Finn off in her soccer gear and Jen left for the spa. The Purple Panthers kind of got their asses kicked in the first game, but Finn had one good half before she ran out of gas. There’s a mixture of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders on the teams so the skill levels are wildly different and the younger girls are generally much less aggressive than the older ones. As we got in the truck to head home between games, she asked me if we could skip the next game because she didn’t want to play. I did my best to buck her up and pointed out that her teammates were counting on her to come back. Then I reminded her that all I wanted her to do was have a good time. Then I sweetened the deal with a donut–to be eaten only after the second match.
The second game was mostly a repeat of the first, but the score was a little closer. She stuck with it and made some good stops on defense. As I ran across the field to hand her water bottle over at halftime, she called back to me, “I’m having a good time, daddy.” That made me feel better, and the parents on the other side of the field with me all smiled as I walked back over.
Returning home I farted around with some small repair stuff on the Scout and around the house, then rustled up some dinner for the ladies when Jen got home. Apparently the spa was a hit; she came back relaxed and feeling good.
Sunday morning I hit the lawn early and hustled to clean up the yard so that I wouldn’t embarrass us in front of the father of one of Finn’s friends, who asked if I could show him how to homebrew. After the lawn was done I set up a table in the backyard, dusted off all of my equipment, got a new propane tank, and cracked a beer as he was unloading his car in the driveway. We got his turkey fryer repurposed to cook wort and fired up the burners by about 2. His burner took a long time to come to a boil, but the staggered timing worked in our favor because I could show him what I was doing with my kit and get it chilled while his was starting. When mine was done we moved his kettle to my burner and finished the boil. By about 6 we had the gear packed up and were shooting the shit over our final beers, and he took off to get dinner. I humped my carboy down into the basement and let it cool off overnight before adding the yeast. It’s another grapefruit IPA I meant to brew for the summer, but time and the summer got away from me. Actually, during the boil I realized that the last time I brewed beer was the day Rob passed.
After dinner, we put Finn to bed and I walked over to the neighbors’ to watch the Ravens beat Pittsburgh on the big screen in his backyard. That was an excellent way to cap off a great weekend.